A compromise meant to regulate loud
music pumping out of Bourbon Street bars landed with a dull thud as the New Orleans
City Council locked up on a 3-3 vote Thursday (April 24).

A last-minute email blitz against the ordinance by an especially vocal advocacy group, the Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates Inc. apparently sewed enough doubt within the council's ranks to silence the proposal.

Council members Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, LaToya Cantrell and Jackie Clarkson voted against it while James Gray and Susan Guidry joined the proposal's principle sponsor, Kristin Gisleson Palmer, in voting for it. Councilwoman
Stacy Head, who could have broken the deadlock, missed the meeting.

In the end, weeks of deliberations to curb excessive noise levels on one of the nation's more boisterous strips became a zero-sum game: the present noise ordinance that the VCPORA has called "badly flawed" remains in place, and an 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. curfew for the playing of musical instruments on city streets and sidewalks will continue to worry musicians and artists.

The vote took place after two hours of debate and the demise of
several amendments, including two that would have changed the time when
louder music could have started to be played on Bourbon Street.

"It
seems to me that we're putting all these amendments on, and I don't know
about
anybody else, but this is getting confusing to me," said Hedge-Morrell shortly before the vote. "And I have a problem with
voting on something that confusing just for the sake of voting."

The curfew, first enacted in 1956, became a crucible upon which the council's deadlock rested. The latest version of the noise ordinance proposal would have lifted it throughout the city. City Attorney Sharonda Williams argued Thursday that it was unconstitutional. She said the present law singled out people playing musical instruments, but not singers or people playing boomboxes on street corners.

"The concern here is that this is about musical instruments. it's not even about music in general," Williams said. "It is not about recording music. It is not about sound. It's about musical instruments, and so it raises the question about whether this is content-neutral and in good standing."

While Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration wanted the curfew excised, Clarkson went in the other direction. She proposed expanding the curfew to include all "sound-emanating" machines from public rights-of-way, going so far as to list phonographs as one of the explicitly banned items. She said the proposal to remove the curfew had surprised her.

David Freedman, general manager of the nonprofit radio station WWOZ, said the curfew was an unjust weapon that police could arbitrarily use against street performers.

"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a
nail," he said. "And in the hands of the police, this is a hammer."

Ashlye Keaton, a lawyer who has represented musicians, artists and Mardi Gras Indians, said that musicians only participated in the negotiations to fight against the curfew.

"The
only reason they have been at the table is to eliminate this curfew," she said.

Before the vote, Keaton threatened to challenge it in court if the council didn't lift it.

Discussions of the noise ordinance in the past few months galvanized
into a bout between French Quarter residents and interests tired of loud noise
damaging their quality of life and die-hard defenders of the city's often
late-night musical culture. The VCPORA had joined with another advocacy group,
the French Quarter Citizens, to call for stricter noise laws and enforcement
policies, against the wishes of the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans,
other musicians' advocates and an umbrella group that Palmer asked to lead the policy
drafting -- the French Quarter Management District.

In December, Head introduced a noise law proposal that closely tracked with the desires of the VCPORA. The ensuing uproar forced the council to pull that measure in January. At that point, Landrieu's administration took a more guiding hand in hashing out the next version.

But as negotiations continued, the VCPORA and the French Quarter Citizens became upset that the FQMD wasn't
listening to their concerns and walked
away from the talks.

The new,
Bourbon Street-centric proposal was submitted to the council on April 10.

Clarkson said she would be satisfied if the next attempt to revise the city's noise laws were left to the next council to tackle.

"It should be the vote of the next council because they will
oversee it and they will have four years to make it better," said Clarkson, who along with Palmer and Hedge-Morrell, was attending her last meeting before she leaves office next month.